September 28, 2026 — The year was 2012, and Massachusetts state Rep. Ann-Margaret Ferrante had an idea that might help fishermen in her hometown of Gloucester.
The Atlantic cod population had been in decline for decades, partly due to overfishing. Regulation to try to bring about a rebound was in everyone’s best interest, but there were problems — and some distrust of regulators by fishermen.
The cod in two offshore regions, the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank, were managed as separate populations, but there were gaps in what was known about the groups’ geographic boundaries and genetic relationships. Ferrante wondered whether genomic sequencing could help track the stock more accurately and approached David Walt, then a professor at Tufts, to ask.
“I said, ‘Yeah, I think that’s a pretty viable idea,’” said Walt, now the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Bioinspired Engineering at Harvard Medical School. So Ferrante secured state funding, and Walt ran tests and found genetically distinct spawning groups within both regions, information that has helped fisheries managers get a better read on the health of the groups.